*4.2. Thyme oil GC-MS Analysis*

An amount of 1 µL thyme oil/pentane dilution with 2 mg/mL concentration was injected into the GC/MS (in splitless mode). The analysis of each sample was carried out three times. The used GC instrument was a Finnigan Trace GC Ultra 2000 equipped with a

Finnigan Trace DSQ MSD (Thermo Electron Corporation, Waltham, MA, USA) detector which was operated in EI mode. The conditions of separation process inside the capillary column HP-5MS (Agilent Technologies, USA) (30 m × 0.32 mm, 0.25 µm film thickness) were as follows: carrier gas Helium, flow rate 0.8 mL/min, initial temperature of column 60 ◦C, and the separation temperature ramp was achieved heating the column to 240 ◦C at a rate of 3 ◦C/min for 10 min. The detector voltage and temperature were kept at 70 eV and 250 ◦C respectively while the injector temperature was adjusted to 200 ◦C. ADAMS, Wiley275, NIST, and in-house created libraries were used for the compounds' identification. The method for this identification was by comparing the retention times and the mass spectra of volatiles [58,59].
